Friday, 29 May 2015

National
Health Service chiefs have launched an investigation and apologised for a
“mistake” after a new privately-run booking service left interpreters struggling
without pay for weeks.

The
Central and North West London NHS Trust, which commissions the interpreting
service in the borough, admitted an “error” with unprocessed time-sheets
“should not have happened”.

Interpreters
have told the West End Extra that they have been left “desperate for
money” and unable to pay their rent and bills.

A
spokesman for the NHS trust said: “CNWL apologises for this, we will pay people
what they are owed. The mistake is being corrected and after our investigation
there will be greater clarity around all the issues involved.”

Interpreters
are hired by the NHS to go GP surgeries and mental health centres in
Westminster to explain complex diagnoses and clinical information to patients
who do not have English as their first language.

Dozens
have signed a petition against the new booking system, run by Hull-based
private company Language is Everything.

The
petition says interpreters have a “history” with the company over late payments
to them from back in 2013, and many have had to chase up their wages through
the courts.

The
petition to CNWL adds: “We find it morally wrong that you are asking us to work
for the same people that have humiliated our colleagues by not paying them.”

A
CNWL statement added: “We are aware of the difficulties Language is Everything
had in 2013. “They told us they were entering into a legal mechanism called a
Company Voluntary Agreement to deal with them. We were satisfied that the
company was financially viable.”

Yoruba,
Cebuano, Lingala, Iloko and Tagalog were some of the obscure, exotic and
far-flung languages spoken by those accused of offences before the courts in
Ireland last year.

The
Courts Service confirmed on Sunday, in response to a Freedom of Information
request, that the bill for providing interpretation services for 68 languages
in the courts during 2014 totalled just over €1 million. The figures show that
most of the fees were paid to Forbidden City Ltd (or their trading name,
translation.ie), which received €832,324.

According
to the Courts Service, Polish was the language interpreted most often last year
in the courts, with interpreters required on 2,151 different occasions,
accounting for 28.8 per cent of the languages interpreted.

This
was followed by the demand for Romanian interpreters, who were required 1,367
times in court, making up 18.3 per cent. The other languages to feature in the top 10 were Lithuanian (14.8 per cent), Russian (9.9 per cent), Mandarin (4.5 per cent), Latvian (3.4 per cent), Vietnamese (2.6 per cent), Portuguese (2 per cent), Arabic (1.7 per cent) and Czech (1.5 per cent).

Independent
review of the standards in the framework for the delivery of interpreting and
translation

The
UK Ministry of Justice (MOJ) appointed independent assessors (Matrix Knowledge,
now Optimity Matrix) to carry out an independent review of the quality
standards in respect of the Framework Agreement for the delivery of
interpreting and translation (I&T) services across the justice system. Of
the five recommendations, the MOJ accepted one.

“Three years after
Capita took on a Ministry of Justice contract to provide interpreting services
in courts and tribunals, recent cases and an independent review have
demonstrated that it is still failing, with serious consequences.”